Update from Jo Phoenix

[Imnobody4]

Sorry can't find the previous thread. I thought someone might like to attend. 18 witnesses!! Bet that's just a tactic to intimidate.

https://twitter.com/JoPhoenix1/status/1692558010323702045?t=O8s-xIF3iu564FVwyaYEhg&s=19

NEWSFLASH

45 days to go.

I received news this week that the venue for my hearing has changed. It is now at Watford Tribunal Centre, 2nd floor, Radius House, 51 Clarendon Road, Watford. It will be in an open court (i.e. members of the public are allowed to attend). The dates remain the same.

The case starts on 2nd October with reading and preliminary issues. Evidence-giving starts on 3rd October. At present, I still do not know the exact number of witnesses the OU is calling. In the preliminary case hearing, the OU's representative claimed that they would like to call 18. We are scheduled to exchange witness statements at the end of next week (25th August) and it is then that I will know if all of those 18 witnesses are, indeed, being called to give evidence.

Interview with Jo in the Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/prof-jo-phoenix-tribunal-tactics-were-the-same-rape-case/

https://archive.ph/O8TVu

Cracking photo, love the wee Dobby doggy, just peeking out 😀

I feel a little foolish for not realising. :)

Don't, I cocked it up, not you

“I plan to send it to every university vice chancellor in the UK,” Prof Phoenix says.

Queen.

And raped at school. Solidarity, sister.

Interview in Mail on Sunday by the excellent Sanchez Manning

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13014369/professor-gender-critical-transgender-prisoners-mob-madness-lgbt-stonewall.html

Sonia Sodha

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/28/jo-phoenix-open-university-court-victory-gender-sex-based-womens-rights

From the guardian/observer

*The judgment is scathing about the way in which 368 academics signed an open letter wrongly implying that the gender-critical academic network that Phoenix helped set up was transphobic; about the academic who said watching back a speech Phoenix gave elsewhere made her “cry at work” despite the court finding it contained no upsetting content; about the colleague who groundlessly likened Phoenix to “the racist uncle at the Christmas dinner table”; and the childish hyperbole some academics deployed in their statement suggesting that to establish a gender critical research network was to put lives at risk.

It's a very odd feeling, suddenly seeing the grown ups reasserting control.

'As a society, we are relying far too much on the courts and tribunals to act as a check on our nastier, more illiberal tendencies. These cases will be the tip of the iceberg; few people have the extraordinary resilience and strength of character it takes to see your day in court.

Regardless of your own views on sex and gender, you should care that this is happening in the same way you should care if any group of people is being targeted for bullying on the basis of a protected belief or characteristic. Not just because it is unlawful, but because using disagreement as the pretext for harassment and victimisation is antithetical to an inclusive society, and diminishes us all.'

Thanks, Sonia Sodha

I love love love this piece.
Might print it out and frame it.

Well done Jo Phoenix for standing up to these vicious bullies. It is great to see her vindicated.
Sadly, the bullies may never have their ‘Are we the baddies?’ moment, but others will.

The OU set up a helpline for the blue haired bods who might have been traumatised by the case happening. Might have shot themselves in their bullet ridden feet with that

Not only did the Open University allow this harassment campaign to proceed unaddressed, it put out one-sided statements that implied there was a legitimate basis for concern.

That is exactly what they are, vicious bullies.

I have thought for a while now that trans rights activism has provided the perfect excuse/cover for misogynists and closet bullies to come out swinging.

I hope this case gives them pause for thought, otherwise they might end up in court having to explain their behaviour, and so far that hasn't gone well.

I wonder what would happen if the boot were on the other foot. If a trans person sued their employer and brought a case that the employer allowed a GC network to be set up, which in their view threatened their existence?

Completely off topic, but I just love Prof Phoenix's style.

I have thought for a while now that trans rights activism has provided the perfect excuse/cover for misogynists and closet bullies to come out swinging.

To be fair, the dissonance between what's happening in courts, the Prison Service, the NHS, Education, and the Employment Tribunal Service is substantial. Bullying and misogyny are positively rewarded.

Look at the comparative generosity with which some "I discovered I'm transgender between conviction and sentencing | Society misunderstand sme so I abuse children" people have been treated by judges, never mind the impact of the Equal Treatment Bench Book. The Prison Service actively gaslights women prisoners. You're positively feted for calling people transphobic and refusing to meet their healthcare needs in the NHS. There was the misogyny-gate of the RCN conference and none of that has settled down. DHSC is in its own quagmire but scarcely cares that rape is happening in schools, they're only too ready to cover themselves in these progressive figleaves.

Employers mostly manage to conceal that they facilitate and even encourage bullying and misogyny. They reward bullies and don't care for the careers ruined along the way (so many science labs).

Of course the perspective and judgments from the Employment Tribunals feels profoundly dissonant. These will remain limited in impact until employers realise that they have to reform their structures and culture and they really don't want to do that.

I think it would very much depend of the group did in fact threaten trans peoples existence.

And holding views such as sex matters doesn't threaten or deny anyone's existence regardless of what some prominent TRAs might say or think.

This would be amazing sunlight and would lay the narcissistic delusions of the whole ideology bare.

On the other hand, I totally identify as having more money than I actually have (DH would agree with this self identity) and the bank is denying my existence by not providing sufficient funds for my personal identity. So, if we can all define inconvenient facts as 'denying our existence' and force people to change what they do as a result, I look forward to my imminent riches.

No GC person has ever 'threatened trans existence'. Believing there are 2 sexes and you can't change sex is not threatening anyone's existence. It's such toddler tantrum tactics.

Or as Sonia Sodha put it ‘childish hyperbole’.

This would be rather like a Christian bringing a case that the employer allowing an agnostic network unacceptably threatened their existential sense of self and belief. (Which by extension would be threatening the existential sense of all those not sharing that person's belief. It gets complicated.)

It's impossible to play these thought experiments because they depend on us all knowing whether or not explicitly saying so, that one view is labelled Good and the other is labelled Sinners and Heretics, and they are not treated equally. In fact the whole case here relied upon equality of treatment and impartiality being an unacceptable sin and trying to punish and eradicate it and its demons accordingly.

It would also have to be considered as to whether the agnostic network were living in a world where the Christian person belonged to a specific Christian group covering their work place with symbols and tenets of their faith, requiring everyone to pray with them and state their language markers of faith and holding holy days with definite issues for not being seen to participate, and where they were seeing themselves and other agnostics excluded, treated with prejudice and discrimination, issued with death threats etc and government being pressured to build this discrimination into law as a punishment for not being of the faith.

I doubt it. We've not seen this kind of behaviour in the UK in a couple of hundred years.

Somehow don't think Sonia S and Kath Viner would be besties.

Frood your penultimate paragraph pretty much sums the situation up, bonkers though it seems. All hail the mighty trans!

Do you remember when the interim Head of Fawcett (Felicia Willow) was attempting to have Sonia S removed from trusteeships in various organisations?

Not a public peep from KV.

Must be a lovely working environment there! 😛

Not as bad as the OU, obviously...

Statement from (cool as fuck aunty) Prof Jo Phoenix

https://jophoenix.substack.com/p/what-a-week?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=437954&post_id=141128194&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4p2qy&utm_medium=email

Classy and appropriately generous-in-spirit post from JP.

In a second statement issued four fret filled days later, Prof Tim Blackman (the Vice Chancellor) made it clear they would not be appealing, issued me an apology (less said soonest mended on such apologies) stated that he recognised that the University had fallen very short in several areas and that the OU is “not The Open University we want to be”.

I found this interesting. I'd wondered if the apology was a mealy-mouthed version that emerged from negotiations between respective lawyers but it seems not.

Great Statement Jo.

I remain in total awe of Jo, Maya, Roz, Rachel Meade, Allison et al.

Not only are you all on the true Right Side of History you are making history.